Borough Market

Today’s been one of those days that remind me why I came to London. Instead of wasting away the weekend, waking up at one and doing nothing whatsoever, I got up at nine and went down to Borough Market with Shay. It was brilliant! It was quite expensive for a food market, but enormous, and about half of all the stalls were offering free taster samples, so we ate quite a lot. I bought some salami from a German deli, some garlic-stuffed olives, some coffee-flavoured beer and some mulled wine. And then we found a small German grocery shop, from which I bought some Zimtsterne and a newspaper. It was a beautiful day too – really crisp and sunny. The nice side of winter.

—

The real reason I wanted to make this entry is to mention some of the German films I’ve been studying in a module at university on German film of the 1920s and 30s. Some of the films have been dire, but three have really stood out, so I thought I’d mention them – they’re all quite well-known names I think, but I hadn’t seen any of them before now:

1. Nosferatu (dir.: F. W. Murnau, 1922)

It’s the filmic version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, unofficially so actually – the filmmakers didn’t bother with the intricacies of copyright law, so were sued and the film was nearly destroyed – but it’s suspenseful, and not too long either. It’s silent, with intertitles, which took a bit of getting used to at first. In the class there was a lot to say about loads of different issues, such as whether the murderous Dracula is actually evil, or whether he’s portrayed sympathetically.

2. Metropolis (dir.: Fritz Lang, 1924)

This is a film that a lot of people have heard of but haven’t actually seen. It’s on the longish side, but I loved it. It’s quite techno-phobic and some critics panned it as a waste of money and confused in its message – trying to say too much and failing to say anything at all. It’s set in a nightmarish world where humans are overpowered and dominated by machines, which is probably an understandable concern six years after the end of the first fully mechanised world war.

3. M – Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (M – A City Searches For A Murderer) (dir.: Fritz Lang, 1931)

This is a strange one. A film about the chase for a child murderer, with the police competing against the criminal gangs of Berlin in a race to find the murderer first. Lang’s first “talkie” (non-silent film), in which the viewer is unsure where to place their loyalty: certainly not with the murderer, even though he is arguably portrayed as less horrific as he could have been – but is it possible to be comfortable with the criminal gang’s effort to find the man, considering that gang is made of murderers itself?

 

(N.B.: I am not and have never claimed to be a film reviewer.)

Yes they can

Amazing. I don’t even know where to start describing how I feel.

I want to go to America as soon as possible.

I have been telling people for years that America also stands for progressive, positive things – sometimes not even really believing it myself – but now I feel totally vindicated. What an amazing country.

FAO John McCain: Fighting is boring

What is all this nonsense about vetoing “everything that comes across my desk” (doesn’t sound like a very efficient way of doing business to me), “I will make them famous and you will know their names”?

Whose names? The names of the spending bills? Do they even have names? If they’re all going to be vetoed then I doubt anyone will be able to remember all their names.

As if anyone even cares, anyway. Go Obama! (GObama?)